Platform voor Architectuur & Design

Public Thursday Evening Lectures

APPROPRIATION OF A BUILDING

6 november t/m 18 december 2025

Entering a building is an encounter with a strange intimacy. We insert ourselves into that fabric: our present becomes a new layer. Appropriation is never a neutral gesture. Space must not be seen as a commodity, but as a collective resource that must carry meaning and life. Against this backdrop, Bachelard's poetic idea of the building as “the topography of our intimate being” takes on a sharper edge. The building is not only a place of imagination, but also an arena of struggle. Appropriation is then not only a reconciliation of past and present, but also an act of resistance, a claim to a different future. The lecture series does not seek to smooth over this tension, but rather to make it tangible. For every building that welcomes us becomes both a home and a statement: a place to dream, but also to provoke.

18 november - Guest lecture Donna from Milligen Bielke with INBETWEEN
19.00 - 21.00 uur, at Bureau Europa
 
Donna offers re-readings of what is already there, reinterpretations of what has been done before, and recombinations of pre-existing elements. She professes her work in the knowledge that architecture never exists in isolation. As the threads of a carpet make a pattern, buildings make the streets and squares, becoming part of ever-expanding and ever-changing cities.

Van Milligen Bielke as an architect relies on the collective pool of existing realized and unrealized architectures. This offers her an infinite reservoir of precedents, references, inspirations, allusions,
and associations. She explores architecture itself, and offers re-readings of what is already there, reinterpretations of what has been done before, and recombinations of pre-existing elements. 

Donna van Milligen Bielke is an architect with an outspoken vision. In 2014, she received the Prix de Rome for a plan for organizing the public space in Rotterdam. She is fascinated by the redefinition and positioning of boundaries, and the influence of architecture on public space. Since 2017 she has been working together with Ard de Vries. Together they work on a diverse range of projects together from private to public, smaller and larger cultural buildings.

The lectures will be given in English. In the coming months, several more lectures will follow.
 
  • 06-11-2025 Jeroen Beerten and Tom Louwette, BEL ARCHITECTEN, Brussels, BE
  • 20-11-2025 Donna van Milligen Bielke, Donna van Milligen Bielke & Ard de Vries Architecten, A’dam, NL
  • 04-12-2025 EAP Lecture
  • 18-12-2025 Thought Arcade

Data Zaterdag 20 november, 19.00 - 21.00 uur  
Locatie Bureau Europa, platform voor architectuur en design
Toegang: gratis